Over the years bicycling has increasingly gained popularity as a sport, exercise and leisure activity. Accordingly, bicycles are often transported with cars, trucks and RVs so as to be ridden while on vacation, at racing events or on remote trails or the like. Thus, a wide variety of bicycle carrying racks are commercially available to allow bikes to be conveniently transported by motor vehicle. Typically, these racks are secured to the vehicle's roof or rear bumper, and can hold between one and four bicycles. Many racks are designed to hold the rear wheel and front fork of the bike, thus requiring that the front wheel be removed before it can be properly secured to the rack. An example of one such carrier is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,446 issued to Biehn in 1993. While these racks provide more stable, secure protection for the bicycle during transport, this form of carrier raises the problem of where, or how to store the front wheel. Generally, the front wheel can be stored in the vehicle's trunk, in an empty seat, or under a seat if room permits, but when the vehicle is filled to capacity storage of the tire can pose an unsolved problem. Proper storage is especially a problem when transporting two or more bicycles, in which case front wheels may become mixed together and later put on the wrong bicycle.
Thus, there is a need for a means to easily secure a front wheel of a bicycle to the bicycle itself, the most secure, convenient point of attachment being the rear wheel axle. There is no prior art that addresses these needs, although U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,729 issued to Luckowski et al. in 1982 discloses a bracket that mounts a secondary wheel onto the rear axle of a bicycle. However, as detailed in the reference, this invention is designed specifically to mount a training wheel to the rear axle, and includes no means by which to accommodate a larger front wheel, or to allow the attached wheel to be easily and frequently removed and replaced.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,854,753 issued to Hautier in 1974 discloses a small bracket to be fixed on the frame of a bicycle. The bracket has a slotted opening with peripheral abutment appendages, the slotted opening being designed to accept various gear-changers within it. While this effectively attaches a gear changer to the rear frame of the bicycle, the device is not designed or equipped to mount the front wheel.
The present invention fulfills these needs and provides further related advantages as described in the following summary.